Now lumpfish are a gift to the world and I will tell you why. Firstly, look at them, they are the definition of when something that is as ugly as it is cute! I mean who couldn’t fall in love with that cute face and naturally sad looking mouth.

Secondly, they can still swim despite their anatomy being completely against them. These fish are not the streamlined tuna, they are not the agile and fast swimming royal blue tangs… no they are defiantly not the ‘models’ of the sea but they have a special weapon that makes them as cool as any of those more glamorous fish. They have an adapted pelvic fin that means they can stick to anything, and they do. Go on go google lumpfish and spend a wonderful half an hour scrolling through some hilarious pictures of these cute babies stuck to balloons, fingers, tanks, each other! Honestly they are amazing.

Lumpfish are also a gift to the world in a more economical sense. This species of fish have begun to be used to remove salmon lice of salmon in fish farms, which can be a major economic pain. The lumpfish get a tasty meal, and the industry stops the salmon from dying from these rather destructive lice.

But apart from knowing that lumpfish can do this they are pretty much an enigma. We don’t really know what they do in the wild, or where they breed, or very much about them at all apart from using them in aquaculture. It is thought that they spawn in intertidal rock pools from around now until june, so if anyone reading this has ever seen a odd fish that looks like this or knows anyone who has, please tweet me @marinemumbles on twitter or email me at marinemumbles@gmail.com. Mainly because a friend and I are desperate to track these little fellows down in a rockpool somewhere!